They ‘buried the dead,’ now Florida Panthers are back chasing Stanley Cup that eluded them | Opinion
When we said goodbye last June to the Florida Panthers season that got all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, it ended on the road, in Las Vegas. There were no more home games, no more season. There was just the raw emotion of your team coming so close to its first hockey championship but pain of falling short.
It is four months later, and the Panthers are back in Sunrise on Thursday night for the franchise’s 31st home opener following a 1-2 road trip that began the new NHL regular season. The opponent is Toronto, one of the teams Florida vanquished en route to the Final last summer.
But this home opener is something more, at least symbolically.
It’s a chance for Panthers fans, past the pain, to say thank you for last season as this one begins, and to know that players feel the same.
“I’ve been looking forward to this for a few months now,” leading scorer Matthew Tkachuk said after Wednesday’s practice. “We know what the last piece of the puzzle is after last year.”
Florida begins missing three key players to injuries in defensemen Brandon Montour and Aaron Ekblad and center Sam Bennett. The latter should return soon but Montour — maybe the Cats’ third-best player after Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov — and Ekblad will likely be out until well into December.
“Three drivers out of our lineup,” as coach Paul Maurice put it.
Last season ended with five Panthers players competing with broken bones for a team sacrificing physical well-being to win. Players weren’t the only ones hurting. General manager Bill Zito had knee surgery after the season. Maurice had not one, not two but three hernia procedures during the offseason.
Now they’re back to do it all over again and fans wonder if last season was the start of something special.
The late, great Don Shula believed and remained convinced to his dying day that his Miami Dolphins never would have won Super Bowls in 1972 and ‘73 if not first going through and learning from the agony of losing the 1971 Super Bowl — and badly, 24-3, to Dallas.
Doesn’t always work out like that, though. Usually doesn’t. Sometimes you miss your big chance and don’t see another any time soon.
The Panthers themselves reached the Stanley Cup Final in 1996 in only their third season and never got back until this past spring into summer — 27 years later, losing 4-1 to Vegas.
So it is natural to wonder about the presently unknowable: Will that be a Dolphinsesque springboard to a franchise-first Stanley Cup in the new season? Or has Florida squandered its big shot and might now take a step (or two) back?
Maurice, 56, the veteran coach in his second season in Sunrise, gets what Shula believed, to a point.
“There is tremendous value in realizing how hard it is to get there, that’s for sure,” he said. “So you don’t have to convince players how hard they have to train in the summer and how bad they have to want it.”
The Cats, after barely making the playoffs, took South Florida along on a thoroughly unexpected two-month joyride through Boston and Toronto and Carolina before falling short vs. Vegas.
Maurice’s daughter baked a cake for every game night.
“So much fun to get that close and then the pain that was brutal,” as Maurice describes that run, and its ending. “Then you come back to training camp and you know, ‘yeah, this is going to be really hard again.’ You need to learn the enjoy the pain of it. You have to.”
Maurice says it took him two full months, into August, to get over get over the Final loss “before the start of me starting to feel good again.”
Only then did he allow himself to regard the postseason run for the gift it was.
“We had this unbelievable life experience with great guys,” he says. “So many incredible comebacks. So many awesome wins. You know how silly romantic comedy movies ask you — knowing you’re going to feel the pain of loss — would you still fall in love? I fell in love with that season last year at the end, the most enjoyable season of my life. I would go through all the pain all over again every year to experience that love again.”
He recalls the feeling in the postgame locker room after the Game 5 Final lost that meant the Cats’ magical season was done.
“Stunned.”
The team had a metaphorical ritual after every game it lost called “burying the dead,” Meaning the loss. Having closure. Moving on. Only now they were burying the season. Their dream.
I asked Maurice if this team, when Montour and Ekblad are healthy, will be a better one than last season’s Finalist.
So many variables beyond health. On is if Tkachuk will be as good or even better than the man who was a Hart Trophy (MVP) finalist last season. Another is if veteran goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky will be a good all season as he was in that heroic postseason run.
For Maurice, intangibles also are in play.
“It’s not a talent question,” he said. “Whether we’re a better team this is year is all about character and how much we can love each other.”
Love at high decibels will be in the arena Thursday night as Panthers fans say thank you for last season as they dare hope this one ends up three wins better.
